It’s time to get ready for the “Great Bowls of Fire” Chili Cook Off in downtown DeLand, Florida.

Be sure to mark your calendar for this event as we are moving the date to Saturday, October 8, 2011.

This festive, family event draws competitors and visitors from all over Central Florida. The only change is that we will not be hosting a CASI sanctioned event but instead will focus on showcasing an Open Chili competition between area cooks, businesses and organizations.

Plans are being made to make this the most successful and most exciting Chili Cook Off that we have ever had. The web site with all the new information will be up and running as soon as possible and we will let you know when that happens.

So SAVE THE DATE, Saturday, October 8, 2011, and we will look to seeing you then.

Ten Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less
By Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.
Created Apr 17 2010 – 9:48am

It usually takes us much longer to change our moods than we’d like it to take. Here are ten things you can do in ten minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those you love.

1. Watch “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. See it online at Oprah.com. This is a deeply moving segment that may be the best ten minutes you’ve ever invested in front of a computer.

2. Spend a little while watching the sunset with your mate. Nothing extra is necessary. Just sit and take in the natural beauty of the sky and appreciate being able to share it with the one you love.

3. Sit quietly by yourself. It doesn’t really matter where or when. Just let your feelings bubble up and then experience the thoughts flowing out of your mind. Clearing your head and heart will give you extra energy to get through the rest of the day.

4. Write a thank you note to your mate. When was the last time you thanked your partner for just being who he or she is and being with you? Doing this in writing will give your partner something to cherish for the rest of his or her life.

5. Take out your oldest family photo album and look through it. The experience will fill you with fond memories and perhaps make you a bit wistful for days gone by.

6. Play with a child. Most kids have short attention spans; ten minutes of quality time from a loving adult can make their day. It will also help you stay in touch with the child inside of you.

7. Visualize or imagine a positive outcome for any issue. Medical doctors recommend visualization to patients with chronic and potentially fatal illnesses. If it can help them, it can do the same for you.

8. Go to bed with the one you love ten minutes earlier than usual. Then spend that time just holding each other. Let the feeling of warmth from your mate move through you.

9. Hang out by some water. Studies show that hospital patients who can see a natural body of water from their beds get better at a 30 percent faster rate. If you’re not near the coast or a lake, try taking a bath. Doing so is also healing.

10. Get your body moving. Shake, twist, and jump around. Let yourself feel the joy of moving to your favorite music, or just the sounds in your head. Run, walk, and bike to your hearts content. You will live longer and love it more.

Summer Camp started this week but there are still openings available for upcoming weeks in three different age categories.

Two week session teen workshop programs-ages 13 to 16 on Mondays through Fridays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm are available.

One week Camp Create programs-ages 6 to 12 on Mondays through Fridays from 9:00am to 4:00pm and the Camp Create-ages 4 and 5 programs on Mondays through Fridays from 9:00am to 11:30am still has openings.

Make a Creative Investment in the Life of a Child. Spark a child’s creativity by giving the gift of a scholarship. Art is an exciting and essential part of the learning process.

Now more than ever your tax deductibledonation will allow us to provide scholarships for children in Volusia County who could not otherwise afford to attend. Please help by making your donation today! Contact us at (386) 734-4371

LIMITED

CAMP CREATE

SCHOARSHIPS

AVAILABLE

CONTACT US

FOR

DETAILS

Funding Provided In Part By The

Cultural Council of

Volusia County

Three New Exhibits Open

The Museum of Florida Art has opened three new exhibits. Two of the exhibits will remain on display through Sunday, October 30. Habits and Habitat which is on loan from the Gulf Coast Museum of Art Collection and the St. Petersburg College Foundation will close 10 weeks earlier on Sunday, August 21. All three of the exhibitions are sponsored by the Beck Family Foundation and The Jaffe Family Foundation.

JOHN WILTON’S M&M’s

This exhibition in the Chris Harris Gallery on the lower floor gives gallery-goers an opportunity to participate in a “Mix and Match” experience by arranging and re-arranging a unique system of Modular Art Panels (MAPs). The MAPs incorporate various types of imagery and media, such as digital photography, acrylic painting and silkscreen. Members of the public are encouraged to play with themes, shapes, colors and patterns as they recreate the look of the show. The possibilities of ever-changing diptychs, triptychs and polytychs will be multiplied throughout the months that the exhibition is on display.

John Wilton, a retired professor of digital media at Daytona State College, is well known for his multi-media works, digital photography and video. His paintings, often free-association collages of personal impressions and cultural icons, mimic the barrage of popular images we encounter in our multi-media age. Wilton’s current work aims to involve the viewers in the creative process, by mixing and matching elements in ways that seem right to them. Unlike “traditional” art, there is no “right way” to recreate each piece or grouping. The show will be a free-association experience, intended as an affirmation of life and art.

HABITS and HABITAT

Watchdog, Mixed Media/Ceramic by Mary Engle, 1995

This presentation of the Gulf Coast Museum of Art Collection and St. Petersburg College Foundation will show, through an artist’s hands, how ordinary objects are used as a metaphor for everyday life and are often given great importance through choice of medium or the way the art is executed. The exhibit will be located in the Main Gallery on the lower level through Sunday, August 21 only.

Daily life, as seen through the artist’s eyes, becomes a very personal and common theme as artists often paint what they know. There is a comfort level in using ordinary objects that are within immediate reach or people with whom they interact on a daily basis as their subject. Common objects, such as a shirt and tie or a missing shoe, are small details of our personal lives that are not usually given a second thought. Whether it is finding humor in the corporate workplace or discovering the beauty in colorful fruit, the viewer is forced to stop and look at the ordinary and relate to the art on a personal level.

OFF THE PAGE : Florida Book Art

Blindspin, Mixed Media/ Ink Jet Prints by Andrew Binder, 2011

The exhibition is curated by Leslie Madigan and will be on display in the Dorothy Johnson Gallery on the upper floor. It features eight Florida book artists reconfiguring the traditional book into unique works of art, challenging the viewer’s idea of what books are. The exhibition poses the question: What is an artist book? Is it a literary, sculptural, paper or mixed media work of art?

Off the Page will be curated and organized to allow audience exploration of the issues facing contemporary book artists. All of the works will be selected based on their narrative ability to communicate a story or tradition drawn from southern influence and will offer the public a comprehensive view of contemporary book making.

The included work will be one of a kind with a small selection of limited edition books using letterpress, offset print, digital and inkjet processes. A library environment with tables and chairs will be installed in one section of the gallery to provide the viewer with a quiet area for intimate observation. This is in contrast to the other spaces filled with books on shelves, wall pieces, and freestanding sculptural book forms.

The eight Florida book artists participating in this exhibit are Robert Beck-Winter Park, Andrew Binder-Fort Lauderdale, Linda Broadfoot-Atlantic Beach, Martin Casuso-Miami, Larry Cooper-Sanford, Ke Francis- Orlando, Anthony Rice-Sarasota and Tennille Davis Shuster-Oakland Park. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 36-page catalogue, produced by the Museum of Florida Art and indicative of the exhibition’s view of contemporary book making. The catalogue will be available for purchase at the museum gift shop.

The galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm and on Sunday from 1pm to 4pm. In celebration of the museum’s 60th Anniversary, all 2011 admissions are free to Volusia County residents with an ID. Non-Residence admission is $5. Children under 12 are free.

Recent psychological studies have discovered what we all already knew. Men who are depressed, stressed and perhaps subject to health issues in their senior years are better off if they have a wife. Doctors are recommending that men invest their time in making their spouses or significant other happy to bolster their own well-being.

OK, but what about the girls? Women “of a certain age” are not necessarily helped by finding a spouse. The recommendation for this situation is to foster relationships with other women.

2011 legislative session included a few wins, some losses and a late-breaking outrage

Florida lawmakers wrapped up their 2011 legislative session today, and the news was mixed for older Floridians.

Consumer issues

Florida telephone consumers, brace yourselves – your basic landline phone rates may be headed up. Older consumers often prefer landline phones because they’re reliable, even in natural disasters, or because they are required for some health-alert systems.

Under this new law, phone companies will be able to raise rates for basic landline service at will. Please start a file now to save your landline phone bills. If your bills go up, we’ll be asking you to share rising phone costs with your legislators. Read more here.

Health and long-term care

Know someone who has chronic long-term health concerns? Warn them – Florida nursing homes may soon not be safe for them. At the very end of the legislative session, without ever holding a public hearing, legislators voted to reduce nursing care standards for Florida nursing homes. Learn more.

If you encounter lower levels of nursing-home care for you or loved ones, AARP urges you to let us know – and to tell your legislator how the new law affected you.

Legislators also enacted a sweeping law forcing all Floridians to go through managed-care organizations to get care financed by Medicaid. This includes older people getting care through Medicaid in nursing-homes – about two of three older Floridians in nursing homes. AARP fought hard to ensure that local doctors and hospitals could band together to set up their own networks to provide patient-centered, high-quality care.

AARP urges you and your family to report any problems you experience in receiving care through the new system directly to your state legislators.

The session’s results weren’t all bad. AARP was able to help stop legislation that could have let electric companies raise your rates to pay, in advance, for renewable-energy facilities. Stopping the bill saved Florida consumers nearly $2 billion over five years. AARP also helped stop an auto-title loan bill that would have let loan companies charge interest of 200 percent or more.

The Medicaid legislation was much improved thanks to your influence.

And while lawmakers did not adopt an outright ban on texting while driving, they required driver-safety courses to include warnings about the high risk of driving while holding phones or other electronic devices. AARP driver-safety courses already contain such warnings.

Downtown DeLand is an award winning MainStreet community where we have learned to cherish that which is special about our past while still planning and moving into the 21st Century. MainStreet DeLand has many dedicated merchants and volunteers who work daily to maintain a lively and economically successful downtown.

We invite you to see for yourself what makes MainStreet DeLand so special. Spend a day downtown browsing our shops and galleries; dine at one of our great restaurants; have a coffee pick-me-up in one of our specialty coffee shops; enjoy one of our many events. You won’t be disappointed!

As a non-profit (501-C-3) corporation, MainStreet DeLand is dedicated to supporting and enhancing the economic development downtown while protecting and promoting DeLand’s historic heritage.

Formed in 1985, MainStreet DeLand is celebrating 25 years of success. In fact, DeLand was the first community to receive the Mainstreet designation. Moreover, our community was the recipient of the “Great American MainStreet Award” and has been voted as the best Mainstreet in Florida five times.